Out of Africa
Email 
Print
I’ve been trying to write about some sport images that caught my eye while trawling through the Reuters file but I keep getting hung up on our pictures from Kenya.
They are so raw, so powerful and uncompromising that even the most accomplished images of cossetted sportsmen performing in completely controlled circumstances seem insignificant in comparison.
George Philipas
What they portray is just hellish - a pile of charred bodies in a church, a young mother lying dead in her home while her distressed toddler wails unattended, a bright-eyed teenage boy with the shaft of an arrow sticking out of his head.
People, dirt poor inflicting unimaginable cruelty and suffering on other equally poor people, the motivation for it really doesn’t matter, it is an appalling human tragedy.
Peter Andrews
When I was a kid I remember a truly shocking Oxfam poster with an image of a starving Biafran child, huge wide eyes, tormented by flies, stick thin and with an impossibly distended belly.
In the intervening period the image of a shocked, wide-eyed innocent has become an overused cypher for suffering in every subsequent African disaster, natural or otherwise, but there is nothing innocent about the look in this child’s eyes, rather there is mistrust and deep, deep hurt.
Given the scenes of mayhem which preceded it I was surprised to find this quiet image and amazed by the potency of the simple gesture of affection. I’ll get back to the sport pictures.
Comments RSSPost Your Comment
-
The Wall
Hi Dave,
I don’t know how to react to the images I’ve just seen considering they’re from my homeland.
I feel hurt, disturbed and most of all diappointed at everything that has occured since the very disputed election results were announced.
But I am somewhat grateful to your holding them back for a long as you did.
After the post-election violence started to take its toll, the Kenyan Minister for Infromation imposed a ban on live broadcasts and urged the local media to exercise restraint. With that regard, we didn’t get to see the rawness of what the so-called support for the political leaders, ethnic violence and random acts of violence made us be: savages. Thereby enforcing stereotypes that many Westerners hold regarding Africa.
And to tell you the truth, I’m partly glad the ban was enforced. I can’t even begin to imagine how things would have turned out if the raw images were aired and printed.Disaster is what we’d have become. A disaster i tell you.
I do not live in any of the areas that were most hit by the violence, but I feel very bad that we could turn on each other on the basis of ethnicity and democratic choices made. It tells alot about where we are as a country.
I’m thankful for the semblance of normalcy in Nairobi but are things really normal?
Kibaki, Annan and Odinga meet in their air-con rooms drinking what they please as the IDPs continue to suffer and various areas in the country remain under the control of different ethnic groups; including parts of Nairobi.
Listening to the harrowing tales did little to affirm that peace is just around the corner but we keep hope alive all the same.
I do not know what the future holds for us but i still hope and pray just like I did at the beginning of the year that things will not only calm down but also get back to what they’re supposed to be…normal.
Que mal que esta viviendo esa gente y nosotros que muchas veces nos quejamos por cosas insignificantes, a traves de esto tendríamos que valorar lo que tenemos y disfrutar la vida y no quejarnos por cosas materiales que al fin y al cabo no hacen la felicidad.
That last picture just brought tears to my eyes.
“That badly that this living that people and we who often we complained about insignificant things, to traves of this we would have to value what we must and enjoy the life and not complain to us about material things that after all do not make the happiness”. # ralpje says:
That says it for me.
gracias senor.
Kenya at who cares about pluto… says:
February 9th, 2008 at 6:13 pm GMT
[…] Some absolutely brutal photos from Kenya. What is wrong with the world? […]
Nothing.
The problem is people, tribal differences surpressed by governmental fiat resurfacing…
Don’t go back to the sports photos David, stay with what’s important and what you feel the world really needs to know about. Surely we have enough images of men kicking leather balls around a pitch on a quiet sunday afternoon.
Does anyone know what happened to that 2-year old wailing for his mother? Truly breaks my heart.
I want to know what I can do to help.
The name of the little boy is Brian Solomon Ingozi Mungai and this is the account of one of our people at the scene:
I visited the home of the lady who died after being hit by a bullet on Sunday 20th January 2008. The house had been vacated as the father could no longer live in a house that had been filled with so ‘much
sorrow and blood’.
We located the father, Jeremiah Mungai who first explained what had happened on that fateful day and then took us to the shamba, 20km away
from Naivasha Town, where the baby now lives with the paternal aunty, race Mmbone Njoroge.
It is symbolic of this heartbreaking upheaval that the father is a Kikuyu and the mother was a Luyha from different sides of the tribal schism that now threatens to take Kenya down a dark path and past the point of no return.
On that fateful day, an as yet unidentified prison warden came from the side of the dwelling and fired one shot indiscriminately. When the
father approached and asked why he was firing, the prison warden fired again repeatedly to disperse him some family members standing behind
him. One shot hit the dwelling, pierced the side of the dwelling and hit the woman sheltering inside in the neck. The shot proved to be
fatal.
The mother stills lies in the mortuary awaiting an autopsy to remove the bullet that killed her. The case has been reported to local police and
the OCS (Officer in Charge of Station) is “investigating the case”.
David,
Thanks for posting so soon. I am glad Brian is with family.
Is there anything I can do for the family. The most I can do is offer some type of financial assistance. Perhaps I can help with the burial expenses. Please let me know and also, let me know how I can send it to be sure they receive it.
~Brandon
“it is a shame to leave in a land with justice as a game” iám Kenyan, and our politicians have shamed us and smeared our pride as Kenyans with a layer of ugliness that will take years to wash away.
David, what is life after all? this pictures are realy sad, and want to know if you can get me a telehone number for little Brain so that i contact the family, i realy want to help. please. thank u
“People, dirt poor inflicting unimaginable cruelty and suffering on other equally poor people, the motivation for it really doesn’t matter, it is an appalling human tragedy.”
I understand the sentiment behind this statement. It is good to recognize tragedy and not to gloss over it for the sake scoring some political or religious point.
On the other hand, it is this type of thinking that fails to recognize and challenge really bad ideas that keeps these tragedies continuing. All cultures and ideas are not equally valid.
Some ideas are wrong and lead people to think that it is okay to inflict massive suffering on others as long it helps your group or gets revenge for some other wrong suffered.
To combat bad ideas that lead to bad actions, you need to first know your own ideas. Second, challenge your own ideas to see if they work in the real world and are really good. Third, be willing to actively promote your ideas in a good way for the sake of helping people trapped in the suffering caused by bad ideas.
In the West, I think we have fallen down on all three points recently. We don’t know (or even have) a unified set of beliefs that help us define right and wrong since we kicked Christianity out of public life. Therefore we don’t challenge our own ideas. Even the assumed set of humanistic principles that many people hold unconsciously are not allowed to be challenged to see if they stand up to real life scrutiny. Third, because of the post-modern emphasis on defining our own meaning and not trusting any bigger narratives, we fail to challenge obviously horrendous cultures that are complete mess, because we do not want to appear judgmental.
Well guess what? The culture that produced the produced the tragedies seen here sucks. The ideas of tribalism and animism lead to suffering. They should be rejected. Judeo-Christian morals basically work to create stable more just societies. We need to promote good ideas otherwise we are simply yelling into the wind.